


once more, with feeling

by Saengak



Series: AoMei collection [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25649311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saengak/pseuds/Saengak
Summary: Mei wakes up again, and again, and again... Until she begins wondering whether this is a blessing or a curse.
Relationships: Ao/Terumi Mei
Series: AoMei collection [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1252463
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	once more, with feeling

**Author's Note:**

> A short fic to celebrate Ao day :) Sorry Ao.

**1**

"It is over," Yagura says dispassionately, looking down at her with his soulless, violet eyes. Mei stares back up in silence, trying to muster up the last shred of defiance that still flickers within her, but in the end, she turns away and searches for Ao instead. Even with their ankles shackled together and their chakra suppressed by a multitude of seals, his unwavering gaze is still fixed on her.

"Mei," he says through bloodied lips, his voice softer than she has ever heard it. It is hard to look him in the eye when she has led them all to their deaths, but she does. Sage knows she'll never have the chance again.

The half-rotted wood of the pier creaks and groans in relief as Yagura's men shove off the heavy rock attached to their bound feet. The short length of chain snaps taut, dragging them along the wooden planks and over the edge with quiet, inexorable violence.

The sea embraces her children greedily, swallowing them down into her depths with a gurgle of welcome. Holding her breath, Mei cranes her head back to look at her right-hand man, the one and only one to follow her until the very end, and smiles bitterly. The water washes away the track of blood that had trailed from the wound where his Byakugan used to be, and in the flickering dance of lights and shadows, he looks as handsome as he has ever been. Her breath streams out in a trail of bubbles when she calls to him, catching in the streaming ribbons of her hair before they are lost to the dimming sunlight above.

He bends down and for the first time, he kisses her.

**2**

She wakes up again, gasping and crying but alive, impossibly alive. Kicking out ferociously, she tears her legs from the thin standard-issue blanket of the ANBU barracks and bolts upright, glancing about wildly to place her surroundings.

"Quiet," grumbles a familiar voice. Her heart stutters painfully when she recognises Ao, sprawled out on his own bed with his back to her, his blanket balled up under his head. There is are unhappy grunts and sleepy murmurs around them as their other roommates shift and fall back to sleep.

She wipes away her tears silently, still tasting the copper of Ao's blood in her mouth and the salt of the sea. "Sorry," she whispers.

He does not reply.

Mei does not know how or why she has been brought back into her twenty-year-old self again, but she throws herself into nurturing her rebellion with all the vigour she can muster and more. She has been blessed with a second chance and she is not about to waste a moment of it. The grand plans she had cultivated in secret burn to life again as she puts on her uniform and ties her headband over her forehead. Her ambitions scald her from the inside when she walks along the mud roads in Kiri and sees her people mired in blood and poverty.

It all comes back to her: her supporters, her influence, her dreams. They love her again. They love and fear her more than they ever had.

Even Ao, her Ao, whom she raises up to be her right-hand man again.

Not once does she let doubts take hold of her as she fights through the years again, careful to fix all the mistakes she had made in her first life. Future traitors are quietly assassinated, critical information seeded with the right people, and funds raised and spent in anticipation of the twists and turns to come. She gains a reputation of near-omniscience and she wears the burden of such an impossible expectation on her shoulders like armour.

She will succeed this time. She cannot doubt. She cannot falter.

And it works, too—they get further than they ever had, crushing Yagura's shinobi until they are a scattered force of mere hundreds, struggling to feed themselves much less mount a credible defence. She offers clemency to those who surrender to her rule and even her rival Momochi bends knee, if only for the sake of his ward, Haku. Morale flies high and Mei works harder, harder, harder. She pours everything that she has into her mission and ignores the way Ao lingers in her office, his gaze soft on her when he thinks she isn't looking.

When everything is done, they will have their opportunity to enjoy everything that they'd set aside for the sake of their village. Laying down to sleep, she dreams of the Mizukage's hat in her hands and Ao's cold lips on hers. "Mei," he whispers, the water muffling his voice, and she clutches him back.

But in the end, it all crashes down in a moment.

"It is over," Yagura says, staring emptily at her again with his soulless, violet eyes. He has Ao's Byakugan clutched in a fist, thick blood dripping between his fingers. There is a trail of crimson leading into the other room, a dark streak marred by signs of struggle.

"No," Mei mutters, trembling violently. "Impossible."

The knife at her throat presses harder and she feels a droplet of sticky warmth slide between the valley of her breasts.

"I did everything right!" she bursts out screaming, struggling against the masked man who has her trapped in his arms. "I sacrificed everything!"

The masked man just chuckles in her ear. "And now you'll sacrifice your life."

**3**

Mei wakes up in the ANBU barracks again, clutching at her throat and not knowing whether she is going to scream or whimper.

"Quiet," Ao grumbles, and Mei loses all the self-control that had bound her so tightly for the past decade.

"No!" she shouts, startling everyone into wakefulness. She's crying hysterically, tearing apart between frustration and grief, and she loses it. "No, _you shut up_!"

Ao stares at her like she has gone crazy - and maybe she has - as she storms over to his bed. She grabs at him and he shoves her hard enough to make her stumble. "Calm down, you madwoman!"

Furious despite the tears still streaming down her face, she pushes him down onto the bed and tries to punch him, but he slaps her across the face. The crack echoes through the room and rings in her ear, making her burn with humiliation, but she deserves it, she failed, she failed him and she failed them all, again, again, again.

The groan of grief that's torn out of her hurts far more than her face. She's sobbing, clutching at Ao like he's her only lifeline, but he's furious and confused. He tries to shove her off again and they end up grappling on the floor, trying to smother each other with blankets.

He's not her Ao. This one is entirely willing to hurt her and devoid of gentleness. But maybe that's the only way he will live. She knees him in the gut and he slams her onto the ground, his arm pressing down across her throat, and it is almost a relief when her eyes blur and her body goes limp.

They are both assigned to cleaning duty in the sewers for the rest of the month. Ao puts on a sour mein and does not speak to her for the rest of the year. It's alright. In this life, she does not organise secret underground meetings, pass folded messages or recruit desperate shinobi for a dream for a better future. She keeps her head down and the only thing she does is kill on Yagura's orders and file never ending paperwork. She doesn't see the masked man again and she is surprised at how little she cares.

The days drone on, and on, and on, filled with blood and misery until she feels emptied of herself where once before she had been overflowing.

It's alright. She kisses Ao again and it turns into a bite, but they fall in bed together, clawing at each other like desperate animals. He doesn't love her, not when Mei can't love him either, but she gets addicted to the bitter taste of his mouth.

In the end, they die kneeling before Yagura, accused of treason they did not commit. Mei can't stop laughing for the irony of it all and it is an ugly sound, forced through broken ribs and past a shattered heart. Ao stares at her with the same look he had when she'd first woken up in this life— _"You madwoman!"_

It all ends too soon, cut off into a ringing silence when the executioner's blade slides through her neck.

**4**

She doesn't make a sound when she opens her eyes to the barrack's peeling ceiling again. She inhales sharply, her throat closing over the remaining hysteria, but otherwise, she does not react. Perhaps she has finally gotten used to this business of dying, living, and dying again, although it makes no more sense than it had the first time she had woken up.

She feels old despite being twenty again and not a year older. It must have been at least forty years since she'd been born in her first life. The fact that she is older than Ao by now makes her chest squeeze strangely but she doesn't want to think about that.

About Ao. About Kiri.

She wants to go back to her first and second lives, when Ao would linger at the doorway of her office after a long night's work, his gaze reluctant to leave her as he bid her goodnight. Every day she regrets not striding up to him, taking his face between her hands and pressing her lips to his. When she looks at this life's new Ao, she feels strangely guilty. She remembers the contours of his body and the taste of his sweat, and she is haunted daily by the final confession of his frozen lips against hers, but...

Still, he is a stranger.

She sets her mind on becoming Mizukage again but this time she makes a vow. She won't let him slip through her fingers again.

**5**

She wakes up to her fifth life and runs without giving a single glance back.

 _'Stupid, foolish girl,'_ she chides herself, chest heaving with sobs greater than her body as she sprints towards the border of the village. She should have known that marrying him would do nothing but condemn him to an even more brutal death.

So what if she'd finally fulfilled one of her dreams and spent a few blissful years with him? Ao had paid for each moment in blood when Yagura realised that their relationship was good leverage. Mei collapses against a tree, weeping. Her body bends under the weight of her pain and her knees buckle, sending her crashing onto the ground.

She cannot wipe from her mind the soft smile he'd given her as he died in her arms, bloodied and broken from torture. He'd kept their secrets until the end, giving his everything, but Mei only wants him back, the revolution be damned. She can always try and try again to make the revolution succeed, but she doesn't have enough of her battered heart left to love another Ao like she'd loved him.

Mei pushes herself up on trembling arms and stumbles along, only vaguely aware of where she's going. She simply needs to put as much distance between herself and Yagura as possible. Ao will only be safe that way. Every death he had died was because of her, because she is his curse.

"Where are you going?"

That voice cuts straight through her heart and Mei turns, a sob jolting through her lungs. He must have followed her.

"Away," she whispers, looking at his feet. There are no weapons on her; her hair is loose and tangling in the cold wind. It is only then she realises that she's wearing nothing but her sleep shirt and long pants, not even a cloak hastily thrown over her shoulders.

Ao's mask reveals nothing of his face and she's glad. "That is treason."

"It is," she agrees, tear tracks sticky and frozen on her face. She closes her eyes, expecting Ao to carry out the execution like he's supposed to.

Instead, she senses him approach her. "Give me your hands," he says gruffly, and her red-rimmed eyes pop open.

"What?"

"I said—"

She holds out her hands and he falls silent again. With a length of cloth, he binds her hands tightly to prevent her from making any hand seals. Then he takes off his haori and wraps it around her, telling her to hide her bound hands as he escorts her back into Kiri. "You've clearly had a mental break," he mutters. "I will keep quiet about this but you will not go wandering about again, do you understand?"

Mei nods numbly, on the verge of another fit of tears just from having his warm haori around her shoulders again, his familiar scent on every inhale. The rest of the trip back is spent in a fugue.

Her father nearly has an aneurysm when he hears of what she'd done. Ao, looking uncomfortable, accepts the handsome sum that her father gives him in return for his silence. The next day, Mei is promptly forced to resign and placed under house arrest, her father pleading to a suspicious Yagura that she has taken severely ill. Mei is not sure that is untrue. With her shinobi career effectively over, Mei spends her days in her room and in the gardens, staring into the middle distance with Ao's haori in her lap as she grieves.

Her father's shinobi try to take it away from her, but with a cold glare and a reminder that she's still very much capable of lava style, they leave her be. Her father believes her afflicted by some kind of jutsu affecting the mind and she does not correct him.

Going to the Water Temple to become a nun is something that young kunoichi jibe each other about when searching for a partner proves too vexing, but Mei finds herself seriously considering the option. She feels too old for the skin she wears. Everything and everyone around her is familiar five times over, but there is no-one she can confess her sorrows to.

When she does take off for the Water Temple in the middle of the night, she doesn't even consider seeking out this life's Ao before going. Yet, she cannot keep herself from stuffing his haori into her bag, even after agonising over it for days. _'A memento,'_ she tells herself, _'to keep myself sane.'_

The days she spends in the Temple turn into years amongst the company of other women like her. They don't ask about the premature lines that have etched themselves on her face and she doesn't offer. In the silence of the mountains, the pulsing black hole of grief and regret in her slowly grows smaller, but it never really fades. On her worst days she rails and weeps over the cruelty of her constant cycle of rebirth, certain that it is a curse and a punishment for daring to dream of grander things than she was meant for, but as always, there is no answer.

It's almost an indictment of her choices that both she and Ao survive the longest in this lifetime, long enough to even see the Fourth Shinobi World War. Yagura dies, not by her hand but at the hands of the masked man, and the Sanbi is stolen from Kiri. A new threat arises: the Akatsuki; and it is later revealed that her mysterious enemy is the long-dead Uchiha Madara, miraculously alive and collecting the bijuu in a bid for world domination.

Mei's head spins at the information. Is that the missing piece that has been missing all her lifetimes? Suddenly Ao's death in her second life makes sense. He'd found out about the masked man's plans for Yagura. Her brilliant, perceptive Ao had discovered his genjutsu and Madara had killed him in order to keep it quiet.

The realisation makes her _furious_.

**6**

The Infinite Tsukuyomi doesn't kill her the second time, but it doesn't mean anything when the headquarters are gone, blasted away into dust and ashes by the bijuudama.

"Send missives to the other villages with descriptions of our missing," she orders wearily, her chest threatening to crumple on itself even as she tries her best to keep her expression stoic. There are so many eyes on her now, so many relying on her to lead them through the miasma of death that surrounds them. "There will be survivors who need to be identified." She says nothing of the dead but her office is a crowd of grim faces regardless.

It is wishful thinking to hope that Ao might be amongst the survivors but Mei cannot accept anything else. Finally she has become Mizukage, having defeating Yagura with Ao's help in a near impossible fight, yet fate so cruelly damns her to losing him again. Somewhere between her lives, Ao and Kiri have become two halves of an inseparable dream. Losing one or the other leaves her bereft of both.

The days and nights blur together as she works herself to the bone rebuilding her fragile, beloved village, telling herself that it is what Ao would have wanted. There is no time for self-pity, or doubt, or grief, not when they've finally come so far.

Only the duty in her bones keeps her alive.

"Mei-sama!"

She rubs her eyes, the only show of weakness that she can afford, and looks up. "Yes, Chojuro?"

Her young bodyguard is trembling, wide-eyed. "Come to the hospital immediately. Konoha has sent Ao-senpai!"

The porcelain cup of water at her left hand shatters onto the ground when she disappears in a burst of shunshin.

The med-nins do not attempt to stop her when she bursts into the ward, her heart in her throat as she nears the mass of wires and medical seal-work that is Ao. He's missing at least two limbs and the right side of his chest seems completely metallic, but pure gratitude washes over Mei as she leans over his bedside. Tears of relief well in her eyes when she touches the uninjured left side of his face with gentle fingertips, finally convincing herself that he's real, and _alive._ The other side of his face is swathed in thick bandages and painted over with more seals, but it can be no-one but him.

Her mourning in her past life had spilled over into this life and kept her from pursuing Ao again, for fear of what might happen to him once more, but now...

"Ao," she whispers, and his eyelid flutters, cracking open just slightly.

"M...Mei?" he croaks, sounding like he had inhaled a lungful of ash.

"I'm here," she chokes out, dabbing at her eyes. A nurse quietly closes the door to the room but Mei hardly notices.

Recognition slowly clears the haze in his remaining eye and the edge of his mouth lifts slightly, into a faint ghost of a smile. "I think... I died, Mei."

"Did you?" Mei whispers, tracing her fingers feather-light over his warm cheek. She leans down and brushes her lips against his, very gently, and he inhales shallowly in surprise. "You're very alive to me."

When she blinks away the blurriness of her eyes again, Ao is staring at her as if she'd grown wings and told him she was an angel. Only after a long, breathless moment does he let out a soft exhale that might be a laugh. "I had the oddest dream, Mei. I think... We were married..."

**End**


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